Many individuals are increasingly utilizing wireless communication devices to remain in contact with business associates and friends. For example, a user of a wireless communication device may utilize voice calls, voice mail messages, email, Short Message Service (SMS) text messages, and Instant Messaging (IM) applications to stay in touch with various contacts. Typically, the user will often receive contact attempts through these communication services frequently throughout the day.
However, the user may not always be readily available to respond to such contact attempts. For example, the user of the wireless communication device may be in a meeting, on vacation, on sick leave, or otherwise indisposed and unable to respond. In the case of voice calls, a call to the user's wireless communication device will be forwarded to a voice mail service if the call is unanswered. The caller will then be presented with a voice mail greeting, which is typically a prerecorded message set by the user of the wireless communication device. In the case of email contacts, the user may set an automatic response, or auto-reply, which will be sent to the person attempting to contact the user via email to inform the person that the user is unavailable to respond to the email message. Similarly, the user may set an auto-reply message for SMS contacts. Finally, the user can perform an IM status update to inform IM contacts of the user's unavailability, and the user may also configure the IM service to respond automatically to instant messages received from IM contact attempts with an IM auto-reply message.